But she meant nothing to him.
She hated him with everything in her. He was a bastard and she hated him.
At least, that’s what she told herself.
* * *
The door he’d used to exit the conference room led into Paolo’s office. His cousin stood up from his desk. “They’re ready for us?”
“All I could see was your father,” Vito told him numbly, trying to laugh it off, but ghosts were skimming across his skin, leaving it covered in gooseflesh. His chuckle came off his heart like a dry leaf. A kind of pain, the kind he would never let anyone, for any reason, inflict upon him, coursed like poison through his veins. “I can’t be like mine, stealing something I’ll end up destroying.”
Incomprehension crystalized into understanding in Paolo’s expression, maybe even something that might have been a protest, but Vito was already on the move again. If he didn’t get out of here, he wouldn’t be able to leave her.
“Finish without me. Give her whatever she wants.”
CHAPTER TEN
NOT LONG AFTER her mother had married Henry, he had said to Gwyn, “Travis can teach you to drive.”
Already far behind her age group in getting her license, Gwyn had declined, not wanting to look stupid in front of him, choosing instead to spend her hard-earned tip money on a couple of private lessons. She couldn’t count the number of times Travis had offered to buy dinner over the years, but she’d always insisted on cooking. When she tried, she could think of four distinct times when he had asked whether she was looking for work because he’d heard about a particular position and was willing to recommend her. She’d always taken it as a criticism of the work she was doing or a favor that would make her indebted to him.
Not once had it ever occurred to her that he might give one solid damn about her.
He did. He might have blown up her relationship—arrangement—with Vito, but he was sorry. He was treating her like she was made of butterfly wings and soap bubbles, barely touching her, moving her with the gentle cadence of his voice. He told her that he shouldn’t have waited for her to ask for help, but that he knew how important her independence was to her. He had wanted to respect her choices, but he couldn’t watch her get hurt. He told her she could do better.
“I thought he cared about me,” she finally broke her silence to say, as they flew first class back to Charleston.
“I know,” he said after a surprised pause. She hadn’t spoken since Vito had left the conference room, afraid her voice would crack and the rest of her control would follow. “And there are times when an affair like that is harmless. But you weren’t coming into it as his equal. By that I mean the position you were in at the time, life experience, money, influence,” he said with a glance from the corner of his eye. “You’re a helluva better person.”
“You don’t know him,” she mumbled into the drink he’d ordered her.
“I know him,” Travis snorted. “It’s like looking in a mirror.”
For some reason that made her laugh, jaggedly and with fraught emotion, but as powerful and intimidating as she’d always found Travis, Vito was so much more. Everything she felt about him was massive and angsty and not the least bit brotherly.
Travis twisted his mouth and said, “Why is that funny? Shut up.”
Which made her laugh more. Because the alternative was to cry and she’d wait to do that when she was alone.
He took her to Henry’s and she really only meant to stay a week or so while she sorted out her life and got a job, but Henry practically begged her to stay. Then Travis walked her into an office a few blocks away and told her she was the comptroller for his friend’s chain of high-end restaurants.
“Nepotism?” Her ego really needed to earn something on her own merit.
“Don’t be like that. You’re overqualified. But it’s close, the money is good and no one will bother you. It’s an excellent stepping stone,” Travis urged. “It reestablishes you in the field which is something you need. He really needs someone who can upgrade his system and train the team to use it. You’ll be doing him a favor.”
“Right,” she mumbled, but took the job.
It was awkward at first. Not so much at work. Everyone there was quite nice to her, but as she began moving around in public some people had the audacity to stare. Sometimes they asked outright if she was that woman. Usually if she replied, “Yes. Why?” it shut the interest down to a startled, “Just wondering.”
Then there was the one day when she was feeling really thin-skinned and went off with the kind of fury that Vito had always warned her against.